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I often hear this phrase when I’m visiting congregations or sitting in meetings: “We are an Easter church.” I like that idea and the reasoning behind it. Who wouldn’t want to live into the resurrection? We are a people who welcome the return of “Alleluia” with passionate voices, celebrating the renewed hope that death does not have the final world. That good news is the joy of Easter that everyone needs to hear, carrying us through our struggles and grief.
But what if we don’t feel like an Easter church? In this moment, it can seem like many of us are wondering if we aren’t a Lenten church instead, dwelling in a place that is waiting and hoping for renewal, wondering when God will move us, yearning for that time when we felt God was
with us.
Most of us know what it’s like to want to skip ahead to the celebration. We want the resolution without the journey, the goal without the work, the “Alleluia” without the silence that Holy Saturday brings. But that isn’t how life unfolds for us, and it surely isn’t what Jesus’ journey on earth looked like either.
The journey to the empty tomb didn’t begin on the cross of Good Friday but in a manger decades earlier. Jesus was born with a purpose: to reveal God’s love, demonstrate grace, and call us into a life of justice, mercy and compassion. It was a long journey, a ministry that spread across the hills of Judea, well beyond his birthplace in Bethlehem and his home in Nazareth. And along the way, he showed us what it means to be children of God.
We are a church willing to serve those in-between moments where we don’t know what tomorrow will bring, doing the holy work that Jesus modeled long before the stone had rolled away.
During this time, Jesus met a woman at the well and offered her living water when she expected judgment. He told the story of a Samaritan as a model of mercy. He fed the hungry, welcomed the downtrodden, healed those who were brokenhearted, and called his followers to live in a grace and love that will not let go. He challenged systems that oppressed and questioned norms that did not serve God. This ministry wasn’t to simply bring people into his fold, but an invitation to live a more radical, loving life.
Only after all of this—the work and wisdom of his ministry, the conflict among his followers and with those who felt threatened by his teachings—do we arrive at the final chapter of Jesus’ earthly life. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and, finally, Easter Sunday, where the empty tomb weaves the entire ministry of Jesus Christ into a mission that continues for us all.
This is why I ask if we are not only an Easter church but also a Lenten church. We are a church willing to serve those in-between moments where we don’t know what tomorrow will bring, doing the holy work that Jesus modeled long before the stone had rolled away. We are a church that trusts in a God that continues to make waves even when we are holding our breaths for that first “Alleluia” to be sung out.
The ministries we carry out in our congregations, our communities and everywhere we go to serve in God’s name are not interruptions of our Easter but preparations for the resurrection already stirring within us. So let us keep walking this road of waiting, together, trusting in the God who is always there and serving with the confidence that hope is on the horizon. And when Easter dawns again and we start singing “Alleluia,” may it rise not only from the triumph of the resurrection but from having lived the gospel in our seasons of waiting.
A message from the ELCA Presiding Bishop Yehiel Curry. His email address is bishop@elca.org.
